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Hi Dave - we're almost on the same page. If I went the 2-cards+cable route, it's because my master is on the PC, and I'm trying to not use the ARM on the SoC chip at all.
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Technically both the PC and the Arria V SoC are configured as PCIe masters (root-complexes). The only way you can link them together is via a non-transparent PCIe bridge, where the master on either side of the bridge sees a small block of base address registers (BARs) that make the bridge look like a peripheral to both masters. The DMA controller in the non-transparent bridge can then be used to DMA between the address spaces of the two masters.
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The OneStopSystems site -says- you don't need any drivers for their cards, but you're right that the devil is in the details. Still - I don't see this as a first-choice path so enough said.
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Chances are, that is because the cards you looked at are not designed to connect two masters together, but to connect a master over a cable to a peripheral board.
You can look for the phrase "non-transparent bridge" to see if they have a product that allows two root-complexes to connect to each other.
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Agreed that if I DID boot Linux on the SoC on the dev. board the connection to the world would be Ethernet. Never thought anything different. :-)
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:)
Cheers,
Dave
Honored Contributor
